Manchin's health care turnaround

Earlier this year, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said he would have voted for President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

But this weekend, he told Fox News that he wouldn’t have voted for the bill on final passage.

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Manchin’s Sunday comments were an outright turnaround — and a sign of Manchin’s difficult task in his race for the Senate. He must run against an unpopular president’s signature legislation, all the while wooing the Democratic base that makes up two-thirds of the state’s voters.

For a Democrat who was not even in Congress when the health care bill was approved, it’s likely that no other Senate candidate has been forced to explain his or her position on the bill as frequently as Manchin has this fall during his campaign against Republican John Raese.

Part of the reason has to do with timing of this late-breaking race. The seat opened somewhat unexpectedly after Sen. Robert Byrd died in late June — well after every other Senate candidate in the country had gotten his or her campaign off the ground. Moreover, Democrats thought the popular governor was a shoo-in for the seat after he announced his campaign in July — but one week from Election Day, polls show a dead heat.

“Gov. Manchin has not had the perspective of a candidate who has been running all year long,” said former West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman George Carenbauer. “He sort of found himself a candidate in the late summer, well after the Republican Party had already been able to define terms of this election cycle.”

That could be why on March 15, Manchin said, “I’d be for it” when asked whether he’d vote for the bill, adding that “I have never, since I have been in the legislative process, and since I’ve been governor, I’ve never got a perfect bill. I’ve never gotten a bill exactly the way I’ve wanted it.”

But when questioned on "Fox News Sunday" whether he would have voted against the health care bill on final passage, Manchin said, “Correct,” and explained that he never thought the legislation would be as far-reaching as it was in its ultimate form.

“And I think many people didn’t know about the bill,” said Manchin on Sunday. “It ends up 2,000 pages or more.”

It wasn’t the first time in the Senate campaign that Manchin has said he would not have voted for the bill. In another television interview, with MSNBC on Oct. 8, Manchin was asked whether he liked the health care bill in its final form, and he said: “No, not the way it passed.” In early September, he made similar comments to The Charleston Gazette.

Even some of Manchin’s supporters agreed that his most recent comments on the issue smack of political posturing — even if he also honestly believes that some portions of the bill are passable.

“I certainly believe that it is political expedience to a point, but I certainly believe that he’s sincere now that he says there were portions of the bill that he’s not aware of, portions of the bill that have passed that he’s now aware of today,” said Larry Matheney, a top official with the West Virginia AFL-CIO and a Manchin supporter.